January 15, 2009Louisiana Creates: New Pro-Intelligent Design Rules for TeachersLast year, Louisiana passed the Louisiana Science Education Act, a law that many scientists and educators said was a thinly veiled attempt to allow creationism and its variants into the science classroom. On Tuesday, the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted a policy that sharpens those fears, giving teachers license to use materials outside of the regular curriculum to teach "controversial" scientific theories including evolution, origins of life, and global warming. Backers of the law, including the Louisiana Family Forum, say it is intended to foster critical thinking in students. Opponents insist its only purpose is to provide a loophole for creationists to attack the teaching of evolution.

"We fully expect to see the Discovery Institute's book, Explore Evolution, popping up in school districts across the state*," says Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, is a proponent of Intelligent Design. In a statement on the institute's Web site, its education analyst Casey Luskin hailed the new policy as a "victory for Louisiana students and teachers." The policy will now be printed in the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which public school officials use as a guide.

State education officials tasked with translating last year's law into policy drafted a document that explicitly prohibits teachers from teaching intelligent design, but on 2 December, board members deferred a scheduled vote. Forrest says the advocates of the law used the delay to pressure education officials to remove that language and a disclaimer saying that religion should not be taught under the guise of critical thinking. On 13 January, the 11-member board unanimously approved a policy that contains no such caveats.

Education officials have defended the revision, arguing that it already includes language barring the use of materials that promote any religious doctrine. But Patsye Peebles, a retired science teacher who served on a committee that helped the education department draft the original policy language, thinks otherwise. "The creationists got what they wanted. We will have to redouble our efforts to educate our teachers and get them to teach good science," Peebles says.

--Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

(*This item has been corrected. The original item quoted Forrest incorrectly.)

So a school in La. might get Bushwhacked the same way as the one in Dover? :O

Henry

Maybe. But they're being smarter about it this time.

The language of the rule, in isolation, sounds unobjectionable to people unfamiliar with creationist bullshit. So, a court might not find it facially unconstitutional like Judge Jones did with the Dover board's rule in Kitzmiller.

That's a problem because then best the plaintiff can do is establish that it is unconstitutional as applied in a particular curriculum.

If the ACLU (or other advocacy group) has to go case-by-case, there might be practical difficulties. That's a lot of litigation.

Man, these people piss me off.

--------------The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most well documented events of antiquity. Barry Arrington, Jan 17, 2012.

The ultimate irony of all this is that the last thing the creationists want is academic freedom. What they really want is for children to learn only their errant beliefs, and get no real science education.

Iíve said it before, and Iíll no doubt have to say it again and again: if you live in Louisiana ó and really, just about every state is vulnerable to this ó make your voice heard. The creationists rely heavily on people simply not knowing what they are up to. The first step is to get aware, and the second is to do something.

Go do something. Write letters, make phone calls. Vote when the chance comes. Because Louisiana has already taken steps over the cliff, and the only lifeline is an educated populaceÖ something the creationists fight to prevent.

The creationists donít want to be reminded of the law they donít like. They really donít want teachers to comply with the law, for that defeats the purpose of sneaking religious tracts into public school classrooms.

The list of the weak-kneed on this issue gets longer and longer every time it is discussed. Not only the BESE members but state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek acquiesced in the lobbying from creationism backers such as the Louisiana Family Forum. The latter is a particularly influential backer of Jindal. Three members of the 11-member BESE are Jindal appointees.

BESE joins the ranks of the wimps who have rolled over on the issue of creationism. Itís a sad thing. Not because faith is a bad thing in its proper place. Not because the Family Forum doesnít have a right to its views. But because the state is siding with the backward against not only science but the rule of law in this country.

I would imagine AiG and Co. will be thrilled at this. However, is this Dover part two ?

Best of New Orleans.com has a great article on the history of the Louisiana Science Education Act and the involvement of the Louisiana Family Forum, the DI, etc.

A taste:

Quote

Barbara Forrest, a member of the Louisiana Coalition for Science, which opposes the science education law, says school boards aren't required to get the state's approval before implementing these curricula additions.

"This law was passed for people who already want to do it," Forrest says. "If they already want to do it, they're not going to ask permission."

Forrest points to the Ouachita Parish School Board in Monroe. In November 2006, the school board passed an academic freedom resolution, which closely resembles a proposed school board policy on science education written by Darrell White, a former Baton Rouge judge who founded the LFF along with Tony Perkins, a former state representative and current head of the Family Research Council.

Danny Pennington, then a science instructor at West Monroe High School (now assistant principal at Good Hope Middle School in West Monroe), said the resolution was necessary because science teachers in the district feared talking about controversial subjects. Pennington prepared a 10-page outline of supplemental materials Forrest characterizes as "just a bunch of creationist stuff he pulled off the Internet."

In the beginning of the outline, Pennington instructs his fellow teachers: "The evolution controversy is not between science and religion. It is a controversy between two different interpretations of science." Pennington never elaborates what the interpretations are, and is quick to alert teachers that the policy doesn't authorize the teaching of creationism or intelligent design.

Pennington's outline might not openly endorse intelligent design ó the idea that life is a result of purposeful design by an intelligent agent, rather than natural selection ó but it does include the viewpoint of Jonathan Wells, one of its leading proponents. Wells, a scientist at the Discovery Institute (DI), a national conservative think tank that has attacked evolution as a controversial theory and promotes intelligent design, once wrote that he had devoted his life "to destroying Darwinism" and has been criticized by the scientific community for misquoting scientists, lying and misleading the public.

The outline doesn't mention Wells' background, but it does offer a blog entry by Wells as evidence against evolution as well as his two anti-evolution books. Pennington also cites examples of scientific hoaxes, such as Piltdown Man: "a great embarrassment to the scientific community!"

Spurred on by success in Ouachita, LFF took the legislation to the state level in 2008. Mills says his organization wrote the state bill, but says it did consult with the Discovery Institute. After the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in 2005, in which a federal judge determined intelligent design was not science and was linked to creationism, the institute also started promoting "academic freedom."

In early 2008, DI launched its academic freedom petition in order for teachers and students to have the freedom "to challenge Darwinism." On the petition's Web site is a model for a statute on evolution and academic freedom, which contains this section: "Nothing in this act shall be construed as promoting any religious doctrine, promoting discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promoting discrimination for or against religion or non-religion."

That section, nearly word for word, is now part of Louisiana state law.